Page 73 of Reluctantly His

I tried to be strong, but one single thought kept circling over and over in my mind, making me want to crumple.

If I was his, why would he entrust my safety to someone else?

There may not have been a threat against me, but I wasn’t enough of a fool to assume that Zeigler would take the insult of our broken engagement lying down.

I doubted he would come at me directly, but why didn’t Reid care enough to protect me himself?

CHAPTER 26

ROMNEY

“Here, take these.”

The sunlight burned my eyes after I lifted the cloth ice bag from my black eye.

My mother stood before me, holding out her hand. She dropped two white tablets onto my palm.

“What are they?”

“Paracetamol,” she answered as she handed me a glass of water.

I frowned. “Aspirin. Christ, Mummy. We’re in New York. You could spit and find a drug dealer.”

She moved to the breakfast sideboard to prepare her usual breakfast, a tall glass of ruby Red Grapefruit juice with Pimms. “Don’t be vulgar,” she chastised as she added ice to her drink.

I threw the ice bag across the room as I marched to the same sideboard to pour myself a gin. “I’m in pain. I need something stronger.”

She flounced onto the sofa in the lounge between our penthouse bedrooms. Arranging her diaphanous caftan around her, she said, “Stop it. You’re a Zeigler. Start behaving like one.”

I cast her a dark look over my shoulder. “I am behaving like one. I agreed to marry that simpering bitch, didn’t I?”

“And look what a mess you’ve made of it.”

I rounded on her. “I made of it? It’s not my bloody fault. How was I supposed to know she was fucking her gorilla of a bodyguard? You’re the one who set me up with a whore who’s fucking the help.”

“Don’t be stupid, Romney. All high society women fuck the help. The blood of British aristocrats would be water thin if it wasn’t reinforced with peasant stock every few generations.”

I grimaced. “Now who’s being vulgar, Mummy?”

She leaned forward. “We need to fix this. We need to?—”

A knock on the hotel suite door gave us both pause.

I raised a finger to my lips as we both held our breath.

While we had told anyone of influence we were staying at the Ritz-Carlton while we remodeled our family home, the truth was that we had been kicked out of it by the banks. Ever since, we had been practically squatters at the Ritz, avoiding the general manager as he tried to collect on our painfully overdue bill.

Another knock.

My father emerged from the bedroom. “What the devil is that racket?”

My mother rose and placed a retraining hand on his arm. “Stop talking, Chiswell. We don’t want them to know we’re here.”

I rolled my eyes. Why couldn’t the old bastard die already and give me the title?

Then a high-pitched grating voice came through the door. “It’s meeeeeeeee, darrrlllinnng.”

My mother cracked open the door and hustled Mary Astrid inside, then surveyed the empty hallway before slamming it shut and putting the chain across. “So how bad is it?”

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